FORTUNE

In this ongoing project, members of the public are solicited to partake in an intimate interaction in which they present their palms and receive their fortunes transcribed onto paper for a small fee. The reading/writing is entirely silent. It is structured around two questions: “where are you coming from?” and “where are you going to?”

The project inquires into trust, intimacy, power, and exchange. Considered in a social and historical context, the figure of the fortune-teller raises questions about belief and desire as well as class and cross-cultural interaction. Fortune telling is illegal in many places including New York City. In the depths of Dante’s Inferno, the fortune-tellers walk with their heads on backwards, punished for presuming to see the future.